Set in Silver Part 21

I shan't hate it as much, however, as I should, supposing that something which happened last night _hadn't_ happened. I'm coming to that part presently. It's the thing that's made me happy--the thing that won't last long.

We left adorable little Sidmouth days ago--I almost forget how many, coming as far as Exeter along a lovely road. But then, everything is lovely in Devonshire. It is almost more beautiful than the New Forest, only so different that, thank goodness, it isn't necessary to compare the two kinds of scenery.

Perhaps Devonshire, stripped of its bold, red rocks, drained of its brilliant blue sea, and despoiled of its dark moors, might be too sugary sweet with its flower-draped cottages, and lanes like green-walled conservatories; but it is so well balanced, with its intimate sweetnesses, and its n.o.ble outlines. I think _you_ are rather like Devonshire, you're so perfect, and you are the most well-balanced person I was ever introduced to--except Dad. I'm proud that his ancestors were Devonshire men. And oh, the junket and Devonshire cream are even better than he used to tell me! I haven't tasted the cider yet, because I can't bear to miss the cream at any meal; and the chambermaid at Sidmouth warned me that they "didn't mix."

Bits of Devonshire are like Italy, I find. Not only is the earth deep red in the meadows, where the farmers have torn open its green coat, and many of the roads a pale rose-pink--dust and all--but lots of houses and cottages are pink, a real Italian pink, so that whole villages blush as you look them in the face. Sometimes, too, there's a blue or a green, or a golden-ochre house; here and there a high, broken wall of rose or faded yellow, with torrential geraniums boiling over the top. And the effect of this riot of colour, in contrast with the silver gray of the velvety thatch, or lichen-jewelled slate roofs, under great, cool trees, is even more beautiful than Italy. If all England is a park, Devonshire is a queen's garden.

From Sidmouth we went to Budleigh Salterton (why either, but especially both?), quaintly pretty, and rather Holland-like with its miniature bridges and ca.n.a.l. Then to Exmouth, with its flowering "front," its tiny "Maison Carree" (which would remind one more of Nimes if it had no bay windows), and its exquisite view across silver river, and purple hills that ripple away into faint lilac shadows in the distance. Then we struck inland, to Exeter, and at Exeter we stopped two days, in the very oldest and queerest but nicest hotel imaginable.

I wasn't so very happy there, because the Thing I'm going to tell you about in good time hadn't happened yet. But I'm not sure that I wasn't more in tune with Exeter than if I had been as happy as I am now. The scenery here suits my joyous mood; and the grave tranquillity of the beautiful old cathedral town calmed my spirit when I needed calm.

I've given up expecting to love any other cathedral as I loved Winchester. Chichester I've half forgotten already--except some of the tombs. Salisbury was far more beautiful, far more impressive in its proportions than Winchester, yet to me not so impressive in other ways; and Exeter Cathedral struck me at first sight as curiously low, almost squat. But as soon as I lived down the first surprise of that effect I began to love it. The stone of which the Cathedral is built may be cold and gray; but time and carvings have made it solemn, not depressing. I stood a long time looking up at the west front, not saying a word; but something in me was singing a Te Deum. And how you would love the windows! You used always to say, when we were in Italy and France, that it was beautiful windows which made you love a cathedral or church, as beautiful eyes make one love a face.

This Cathedral has unforgettable eyes, and a tremendously long history, beginning as far back as nine hundred and something, when Athelstan came to Exeter and drove out the poor British who thought it was theirs. He built towns, founded a monastery in honour of Saint Mary and Saint Peter, not having time, I suppose, to do one for each. And afterward the monastery decided that it would be a cathedral instead. But two hundred and more years earlier, that disagreeable St. Boniface, who disliked the Celts so much, went to a Saxon school in Exeter! I wonder what going to school was like when all the world was young?

I wandered into the Cathedral both mornings to hear the music; and something about the dim, moonlit look of the interior made me feel _good_. You will say that's rather a change for me, perhaps, because you tell me reproachfully, sometimes, after I've thought about the people's hats and the backs of their blouses in church, that I have only a bowing acquaintance with religion. I don't know whether I mayn't be doing the most dreadful wrong every minute by pretending to be Ellaline; but it was _begun_ for a good purpose, as you know, and you yourself consented.

And though I have twinges sometimes, I did feel good at Exeter. Oh, it did me heaps of good to _feel_ good! You have to live up to your feelings, if you feel like that. And I prayed in the Cathedral. I prayed to be happy. Is that a wrong note for a prayer? I don't believe it is, if it rings true. Anyway, it makes me feel young and strong to pray, like Achilles, after he'd rolled on the earth. And I do feel so young and strong just now, dear! I have to sing in my bath, and when I look out of the window--also sometimes when I look in the gla.s.s, for it seems to me that I am growing brighter and prettier.

I love to be pretty, because it's such a beautiful world, and to be pretty is to be in the harmony of it. Though, perhaps--only perhaps, mind!--I'm glad I'm not a regular beauty. It would be such a responsibility in the matter of wearing one's clothes, and doing one's hair, and never getting tanned or chapped.

And I love to be thin, and alive--alive, with my soul in proportion to my body, like a hand in a glove, not like a seed in a big apple. But isn't this funny talk, in the midst of describing Exeter? It's because of the reaction from misery to ecstasy that I'm so bubbly. I can't stop; but luckily it didn't come on in Exeter, because the delightful, queer old streets aren't at all suitable to bubble in. It's impertinent to be excessively young there, especially in the beautiful cathedral close, where it is so calm and dignified, and the rooks, who are very, very old, do nothing but caw about their ancestors. I think some curates ought to turn into rooks when they die. They would be quite happy.

Our hotel, as I said, was fascinating, though Mrs. Norton fell once or twice, as there were steps up and down everywhere, and d.i.c.k b.u.mped his forehead on a door. (I wasn't at all sorry for him.) Mrs. Senter said, if we'd stopped long she would have got "cottage walk," and as she already had motor-car face and bridge eye, she thought the combination would be _trop fort_. If she weren't d.i.c.k's aunt, and if she weren't so determined to flirt with Sir Lionel without his knowing what she's at, and if she didn't make little cutting speeches to me when he isn't listening, I think I should find her amusing.

The only things I didn't like at the hotel were the eggs; which looked so nice, quite brown, and dated the morning you had them, on their sh.e.l.ls, but tasting mediaeval. I wonder if eggs can be post-dated, like cheques? As for the other eatables, there was very little taste in them, mediaeval or otherwise. I do think ice-cream, for instance, ought to taste like something, if it's only hair oil. And the head waiter had such mournful-looking hair!

I never got a talk alone with Sir Lionel in Exeter, because though he tried once or twice, with the air of having a painful duty to accomplish, I was afraid he was going to ask me about d.i.c.k, and I just felt I couldn't bear it, so avoided him, or instantly tacked myself on to Emily or someone. I think Emily approves of my running to her, whenever threatened by man's society, because she thinks the instinctive desire to be protected from anything male is pretty and maidenly. She certainly belongs to the Stone Age in some of her ideas; though her maxims are of a later period. Many of them she draws (and quarters) from the Scriptures; at least, she attributes them to the Scriptures, but I know some of them to be in Shakespeare. Lots of people seem to make that mistake!

Of course, in the car I never talk to Sir Lionel, except a word flung over shoulders now and then, for Mrs. Senter sits by him. She asked to.

Did I tell you that before? So the day we left Exeter things were just the same between us; not trustful and silently happy, as at the time of the _ring_, but rather strained, and vaguely official.

It had rained a little in Exeter, but the sky and landscape were clean-washed and sparkling as we sailed over the pink road, past charming little Starcross, with its big swan-boat and baby swan-boat; past Dawlish of the crimson cliffs and deep, deep blue sea (if I were a Bluer--just as good a word as Brewer!--I would buy Dawlish as an advertis.e.m.e.nt for my blue. It seems made for that by Nature, and is so brilliant you'd never believe it was true, on a poster); down a toboggan slide of a hill into Teignmouth, another garden-town by the sea, and through one of England's many Newtons--Newton Abbot, this time--to Torquay.

As we hadn't left Exeter until after luncheon, it was evening when we arrived; but that, Sir Lionel said, was what he wanted, on account of the lights in and on and above the water, which he wanted us to see as we came to the town. He has been here before, long ago, as he has been at most of the places; but he says that he enjoys and appreciates everything more now than he did the first time.

It was like a dream!--a dream all the way from Newton Abbot, where sunset began to turn the silver streak of river in the valley red as wine. There was just one ugly interval: the long, dull street by which we entered Torquay, with its tearing trams and common shops; but out of it we came suddenly into a scene of enchantment. That really isn't too enthusiastic a description, for in front of us lay the harbour; the water violet, flecked with gold, the sky blazing still, coral-red to the zenith, where the moon drenched the fire with a silver flood. The hills were deeper violet than the sea, sparkling with lights that sprang out of the twilight; and on the smooth water a hundred little white boats danced over their own reflections.

We begged Sir Lionel not to let Young Nick light our lamps, for they are so fierce and powerful, they swallow up the beauty of the evening. But I do think, where there are lots of motors about, it would be nice if _people_ had to be lighted at night, and especially dogs.

Now, at last, I have come to the Thing--the thing that makes me happy, with a happiness all the more vivid because it can't last. But even if I fall to the depths of misery once more, I shan't be a coward, and moan to you. It must be horrid to get letter after letter, full of wails! I don't see how Mademoiselle Julie de Lespina.s.se could write the letters she did; and I can't much blame Monsieur de Guibert for dreading to read them, always in the same key, and on the same note: "I suffer, I suffer.

I want to die."

Well, I've kept you waiting long enough, or have you, perhaps, read ahead? I should, in your place, though I hope _you_ haven't.

We came to the Osborne because Sir Lionel knew and liked it, though there's another hotel grander, and we usually go to the grandest (so odd, that feels, after our travels, yours and mine, when our _first_ thought was to search out the cheapest place in any town!), and the Osborne has a terraced garden, which runs down and down the cliffs, toward the sea, with a most alluring view.

Mrs. Senter had luggage come to meet her here, and she appeared at dinner in our private sitting-room looking quite startlingly handsome, in a black chiffon dress embroidered in pale gold, exactly the colour of her hair. The weather had turned rather cold, however, since the rain at Exeter, so, gorgeous as the moonlight was, she wanted to stop indoors after dinner, and proposed bridge, as usual.

That was the signal for me to slip away. I'd finished "Lorna Doone,"

which is the loveliest love story in the English language (except part of "Richard Feverel"), so I thought I would go into the garden. I felt moderately secure from d.i.c.k, because, even if he really _is_ in love with me, he is as much in love with bridge, and besides, he's afraid of his aunt, for some reason or other. As for Sir Lionel, it didn't occur to me that he might even _want_ to come.

I strolled about at first, not far from the hotel. Then I was tempted farther and farther down the cliff path, until I found a thatched summer-house, where I sat and thought what a splendid, ornamental world it would be to live in if one were _quite_ happy.

By this time the sky and sea were bathed in moonlight, the stone pines--so like Italian pines--black against a silver haze. In the dark water the path of the moon lay, very broad and long, all made of great flakes of thick, deep gold, as if the sea were paved with golden scales.

It was so lovely it saddened me, but I didn't want to go indoors; and presently I heard footsteps on the path. I was afraid it was d.i.c.k, after all, as he is horribly clever about finding out where one has gone--so detectivey of him!--but in another second I smelt Sir Lionel's kind of cigarette smoke. It would make me think of him if it were a hundred years from now! Still, d.i.c.k borrows his cigarettes often, as he says they're too expensive to buy, so I wasn't safe. Indeed, _which ever_ it turned out to be, I wasn't safe, because one might be silly, and the other might scold.

But it was Sir Lionel, and he saw me, although I made myself little and stood in the shadow, not daring to sit down again, because the seat squeaked.

"Aren't you cold?" he asked.

I answered that I was quite warm.

Then he said that it was a nice night, and we talked about the weather, and all that idiotic sort of thing, which means empty brains or hearts too full.

By and by, when I was beginning to feel as though I should scream if it went on much longer, he stopped suddenly, in a conversation about fresh fish, and said: "Ellaline, I think I must speak of something that's been on my mind for some days."

He'd never called me "Ellaline" before, but only "you," and this gave me rather a start, to begin with, so I said nothing. And, as it turned out, that was probably the best thing I could have done. If I'd said anything, it would have been the wrong thing, and then, perhaps, we should have started off with a misunderstanding.

"I should hate to have you think me unsympathetic," he went on. "I'm not. But--do you want to marry d.i.c.k Burden, some day?"

If he'd put it differently I might have hesitated what to answer, for I _am_ afraid of d.i.c.k, there's no use denying it--of course, mostly on Ellaline's account, but a little on my own too, because I'm a coward, and don't want to be disgraced. As it was, I _couldn't_ hesitate, for the thought of marrying d.i.c.k Burden would have been insupportable if it hadn't been ridiculous. So you see, I forgot to dread what d.i.c.k might do if he heard, and just blurted out the truth.

"I'd sooner go into a convent," said I.

"You mean that?" Sir Lionel pinned me down.

"I do," I repeated. "Could you imagine a girl wanting to marry d.i.c.k Burden?"

"No, _I_ couldn't," said Sir Lionel. And then he laughed--such a nice, happy laugh, like a boy's, quite different from the way I have heard him laugh lately--though at first, in London, he seemed young and light-hearted. "But I'm no judge of the men--or boys--a girl might want to marry. d.i.c.k's good-looking, or near it."

"Yes," I admitted. "So is your little chauffeur. But I don't want to marry it."

"Are you flirting with d.i.c.k, then?" Sir Lionel asked, not sharply, but almost wistfully.

I couldn't stand that. I had to tell the truth, no matter for to-morrow!

"I'm not flirting with him, either," I said.

"What then?"

"Nothing."

"But he seems to think there is something--something to hope."

"Did he tell you so?"

"No. He sent me word."